Trying to stay a little tighter with the posts tonight, I offer you three articles to comment on. These are the final post for the month of September. Yippie!
The Wall Street Journal reported on the not-so-green side of reusable shopping bags. While I post this for the interesting facts -- especially considering we live in the Bay Area, an area known for its cutting edge green-ness -- I wonder a few things: 1. How might the media have played a roll in the questionable ethics of these bags and their marketing? Simply because something is said to be green, doesn't mean it is. 2. If the media is the watch dog for the people, why didn't it question the claims of these bags earlier? 3. Were the American people to blame? In our desire to be green, are we the people willing to follow any claim, any product just to soothe our own conscience? 4. Does any of this really matter? The American public has been lied to about far more pressing issue than this.
Wall Street R.I.P. That was the headline across the NYTimes business section today. What a story. This story explains some of the goings on of Wall Street and some explanation of what is to come. I post this not only for the content, but also the writing. What did you think of the style of this article? The opening? The playing to the American Dream and how it's over? Does this piece glorify what is going on on the Street right now, or simply try to explain how we got here?
Slate Magazine, along with many other news outlets, has started using Twitter as a way to interact with its readers. Firstly -- Twitter is a social networking sight based on micorblogging. Yes, mini itty bitty blogs. You are limited to 140 characters when commenting on anything. So, check out Slate Magazine's Twitter page and read through some of the responses about the presidential debate. Is this the wave of the future? Limiting your comments and ideas to 140 characters (that includes spaces)? Is this an effective way to get the readership involved? Or, is Twitter just another way to reinforce uneducated, slightly superficial responses from a generation already too consumed with instant gratification and brevity?
Share, comment, enlighten.
On another note -- want to do better on the current events quizzes?? Check out these podcasts from the NYTimes, particularly the one called Front Page as it summarizes the major headlines of the day. These podcasts range in length and are quite interesting and easy to listen to.
And, one final note -- Wordles are the hottest thing in design right now. Check these out from the DNC and RNC. Is there a place for Wordles in The Voice?
11 comments:
Twitter is actually a site that I've heard of before and found interesting. I think it's a great way to have readers participate in media without getting too many long-winded answers. I know that on a lot of other sites, the lack of restrictions ends up more of a hindrance with many people leaving essay-long comments and turning the informational source into a place for a personal soapbox. Though the depth of the 140 character comments may not be so great, it's an interesting approach to expression. I think it's similar to writing six-word biographies in personal expository: it's a quick snippet and, though challenging, a lesson in how to be concise.
In their article, “An Inconvenient Bag,” the Wall Street Journal tackles an issue I have always been peeved by. It seems throughout the re-usable bag craze, no one has actually gone through and conducted the research on the environmental impact of the various bag options. One of the first changes in this ‘bag culture’ was when people decided it was time to turn away from the classic flimsy plastic shopping bag. Sure, it is great not to use plastics that use a lot of oil and chemicals to produce, don’t decompose well, and are damaging to the environment as litter, but who ever said a re-usable tote bag or paper bag doesn’t have the same impacts? Like the article said, thicker multi-use bags are often harder to produce and to decompose when they inevitably make their way into landfills, and paper bag production involves thousands of trees and a pulp making process that uses, pollutes, and dumps billions of gallons of water into fragile watersheds every day.
So, as Mary asked, who is to blame? I think in this case, a lot of blame rests on the companies that saw re-usable bags as another profitable outlet, drawing on the American tendency to prefer anything that makes them feel ‘green.’ The media tapped into this craze; journalism is fueled by the people, for the people, and reflects what the population is doing, thinking, and questioning. The media publicized the new re-usable bag trend, thus pushing it even farther. Like with any pressing issue, we can only hope that someone (a journalist, perhaps) would have stopped along the way and published something revealing the other side of this, shall I say, two handled issue.
After reading Wall Street R.I.P, I really enjoyed the way they used one line paragraghs to emphasize points. As for as the articles, I think they are playing off of everyones fear and lack of knowledge to further scare the readers. The title "Wall Street R.I.P, evokes a sense of fear, and is only enhancing the fear that was already with us prior to reading the article. I think that the one line paragraphs are very effective in emphasizing a point.
Geraldo is Hossain by the way.
I agree with Sarah that the whole bag craze, and arguably a majority of the accessible green revolution, does nothing more than feed the average American's hunger to feel "green". If we look at the so-called green trends that have caught on (reusable bags, carbon offsets, organic jeans...) the bulk of them do nothing to actually benefit the environment. Everything has an environmental impact, it is just a question of which impact is worse.
In the case of reusable shopping bags, they are, as the article clearly shows, not perfect. They are not the "green" that we all idealistically hope for, they aren't going to shrink your ecological footprint or end global warming. But what is "green" anyway? Really, it is just a marketing scheme that plays on the aforementioned hunger. And as Sarah so eloquently stated, the media's job, as far as features go, is to report upon trends already existing amongst the public. Now this article has been written, and I'm sure there are others, exposing the evils of reusable bags what can we expect? Is Wal-Mart going to pull all their reusable bags? I doubt it. So these not-so-sustainable bags will continue to be popular, is it that much worse than a regular plastic bag?
I have always been upset by the number of supposedly green products available that at the best do nothing to help the environment and at the worst actually harm it. The reusable bag is just another example of consumers who do not want to make any significant changes in their lives attaching themselves to the idea of being "green" by buying into the newest trends. Its foolish for anyone to believe that simply buying a bag will really help the environment especially if consumers go to the checkout stands with their reusable bags filled with produce from across the world and crappy plastic toys that will never decompose. Like many things, including the Prius with its environmentally damaging battery, these bags are mainly meant to let people feel good about themselves while looking good in front of other people. If someone truly wanted a reusable bag, the plain paper bags that they give out at most stores would last through quite a few trips to the store before it needed to be recycled. Most people forget to bring their reusable bags with them when they go shopping and end up using an extra paper or plastic bag anyway or even worse purchasing another"green" bag. They certainly aren't green if you use a new one every time. The media is somewhat to blame for the misconceptions but it is mainly the consumers who are responsible for recognizing when something just doesn't make sense. This issue matters a little bit but it pales in comparison to other problems, environmental and other facing the world today. Lastly the bay area needs to recognize that it is not really a green place. We may think about the issue a lot but the fact remains that we have a huge collective ecological footprint and that cutting out some of the "acceptable" things we do such as keeping lawns, taking lengthy showers, and driving everywhere we need to go would impact the enviornment much more than simply switching shopping bags ever could.
I find what Sarah, Kareem, and Austin have said about the article, "An Inconvenient Bag," from the Wall Street Journal to be valid and interesting. However I have to disagree with them slightly about this being a purely negative issue. I think that although these "green bags" may have an overall detrimental impact on the environment, they symbolize a cultural shift towards greener lifestyles.
Companies rely on consumers and pay close attention to societal trends. So, when big companies start producing "green products," even if they are not truly green, it shows that our society as a whole is paying attention to the environment.
This gives me hope for the future. In Marin so many people are eco-crazy and I was starting to wonder and worry if people outside our little bubble were feeling similar environmental fervor. According to "An Inconvenient Bag," people outside Marin are taking notice.
I also think, unlike Moody, that it is the fault of the media, not the consumer that these "green bags" have become so popular despite their harmful impact. The average consumer is not going to extensively research the environmental impact of a supposedly "green bag." It is the role of the media to do this research and inform us that we are being lied to.
One thing that the majority of consumers are at fault for however, is laziness. One may feel good when buying a "green bag" but if one never uses that "green bag" then that purchase has caused more harm than good.
However, even in this case I think the media can play a role in helping to hype up the general public about using "green bags." If people think it is cool to use reusable bags they are much more likely to use them than if they were just using them to save the environment. Because unfortunately, when something becomes personal, like your image, people will care more than if it is some issue like global warming which we all know about but we cannot see the immediate effects of.
For me, 140 characters is not enough to delve into complicated topics proposed by the site Twitter. There is definitely power in being concise but in this case, Twitter weakens arguments by cutting them off before they have had a chance to develop. Many of the comments I read on the site seemed to be spur of the moment posts that hadn't really been thought through. Twitter supplies an interesting mode of communication but overall I do not think it is a successful venue for serious discussion of an issue (if it was intended to be this at all).
In response to the article about the decrease in newspapers, I believe that it is just part of the cycle of innovation. This goes for almost all aspects of material life. The pony express turned into airmail, which turned into email. Cups with strings attached led to telephones, which eventually led to cellular telephones. Innovation is part of human life. With news available on the world wide web, newspapers are no longer a necessity. Most would not even consider them a luxury anymore. Some say they just love the feeling of having a newspaper in their hands. When newspapers die out, they can go online and print. They'll get over it, Just like people have gotten over board games in favor of video games and television in favor of radio.
In response to the Twitter article, I dont think that the 140 character thing will work. People can just continue to write an extension to their post in a new one. People are smart enough to figure that out. If they have more to say, they will say it. Though the obvious purpose of the limit is to keep ideas concise, it is our natural instinct to find ways around that and abuse how easy it is to work around it. In principal, I think its a great idea. There are times when people do not want to read/write long, drawn out posts. People, however, will most certainly find ways around the limit and kill the fundamental purpose of twitter.
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